AI Vibe Coding Tools Turned Apple’s App Store From a Ghost Town Into a Gold Rush
Apple’sAAPL App Store spent nearly a decade slowly dying — then AI showed up with a defibrillator. The platform posted an 84% year-over-year jump in new apps in Q1 2026, reaching 235.8K submissions, according to The Information. Driving this shift are AI-assisted “vibe coding” tools like Claude Code and OpenAI’s Codex, which let non-programmers build apps from simple prompts.
- New App Store launches rose 30% to ~600K in 2025, reversing a 48% drop from 2016–2024 as AI-driven “vibe coding” accelerates the rebound.
- Productivity apps lead the surge, with photo, video, and weather tools also rising, though concerns are growing around low-quality apps flooding the platform.
Flood gates open, quality TBD: Apple’s crackdown on native vibe-coding apps hasn’t slowed the boom. AI coding platform Replit’s users alone have published ~5K apps recently, even with restrictions in place, as new tools continue lowering the barrier to build. Apple says 90% of submissions are reviewed within 48 hours, keeping the pipeline moving. The App Store gold rush is real — but separating the gems from the stones is going to be a hard challenge.